Beck to Basics
by manitilde
Summary: Beck Oliver is basically a good guy and, really, it's his biggest flaw. Companion to "Just Jade" and "Cat's Cradle."
1. Beck to Basics

Beckett Imaran Oliver is a hopeless romantic and he has his parents to blame for that.

They met in Introduction to Theatre history while studying at the same college. The way his father told him, the one and only time he told the story; it was love at first sight. But, like all great love stories, there was conflict. Shatara Singh was already engaged when James Oliver met her. It's a marriage set up by her parents, but she complies. It's tradition. That doesn't stop James from pursuing her though.

At first he tries simply to be her friend, helping her study or offering to get her tea since she didn't like coffee, and she resists. To her, it's more trouble than it's worth to even befriend let alone allow herself to fall in love with the man. Eventually though, like the hero of the story, he wins her over. There is the problem of her fiancé, and worse still, her parents.

The choice of when to announce their relationship is taken from them though, when Shatara gets pregnant (Beck actually infers this part, all his dad tells him is that he was born right after his parents got married.) James and Shatara elope and move down to the LA area where James still has some family. Shatara's parents disown her when she runs away and although it is heartbreaking, she took solace in her new family where she was married to the man she loved and had a beautiful son.

Beck imagines that his mother was a phenomenal woman. He thinks that she would have been proud of his accomplishments so far in life and that she would have supported his decision to pursue acting (though, considering where his parent's met and his dad's job, he sometimes wonder if it was a choice at all.) Beck imagines that she would love who he turned out to be. Beck imagines all these things because she dies way before he had a chance to show her.


	2. Day One

Beck meets Jade on their first day at Hollywood Arts. It's last period when he sees her. She sits across the room of his beginning acting class, next to a girl with bright red hair who he remembers from his math class. She doesn't look at him for the entire class period, but when the bell rings their eyes meet for the briefest of seconds. Beck's heart stops. He smiles at her and she turns away, dragging the red haired girl with her.

When Beck's dad asks him how his first day went, he tells him proudly that he found the girl he was going to spend his life with.


	3. A Perfect Square

It's not exactly a secret that Jade didn't take to Beck right away. In fact, it is fairly common knowledge that it took months of persistent wooing in order for Jade to agree to go on a date with him, something that half thought to be utterly ridiculous and the other half thought to be highly romantic even if they couldn't fathom why he chose _Jade_ of all people.

What _isn't_ common knowledge is exactly how many times Beck asked Jade out before she gave in. The fact is that he asked her every day from September to February until finally, on the second Friday of the month she said yes.

Well, she said, "Fine, you can buy me lunch, but it'd better be good and I pick the place" which is something Beck chooses to ignore when reminiscing.

Instead he remembers picking her up that President's Day, taking the bus into Little Tokyo, trying vegan sushi for the first time, and grinning like a fool as he watched Jade wipe wasabi off the side of her mouth.


	4. Born Free

Beck loves to go on long car rides. Train rides too. Starting off in one place and ending up somewhere else entirely. More than the feeling of being somewhere new, Beck just loves the feeling of moving forward.

That's part of the reason that he moves into the RV.

(It's not because Mary wanted to redecorate the house and change everything around from how it used to be because you can't miss what you never had, right?)

Hitching it up to the red pick-up whose engine he and his dad built the summer before his sophomore year, makes Beck feel good. Like he could go anywhere. That the whole world was out there waiting for him.

Like he was free.


End file.
